1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of website and application performance monitoring and testing and more particularly relates to the field of website and application monitoring and testing from a private network.
2. Related Art
Conventional website or application performance monitoring and testing solutions address the need for web enabled businesses to measure the speed and reliability of their websites and applications as seen by a global audience accessing them over the internet. There are two types of conventional solutions, namely conventional external and conventional internal solutions. Conventional external solutions lack the ability to access websites or applications which are resident on a customer's internal private network due to the fact that these internal private networks are protected by a firewall or other security system. In addition, conventional external solutions can not monitor and test from the point of view of the private network to websites or applications which are hosted outside the internal private network, for example via the Internet.
Conventional internal solutions suffer from the same limitations as traditional delivered solutions and are additionally problematic because they require a large, complex software installation with trained and dedicated staff to maintain them. One cumbersome solution that has been suggested to address these significant drawbacks of the conventional solutions is to provide a server inside the protected network. This requires a considerable amount of time to set up, configure, and maintain. This additionally requires the customer to spend a lot of time learning how to operate the server, including its software and hardware components. This type of solution also requires direct access to the private network. There are no existing solutions that can externally monitor a website or application that is located beyond a firewall or security system in a private network. Therefore, the industry has defined a need for a system and method that overcomes these significant problems found in the conventional systems as described above.